The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7390 p277
4 March 2006

Society summary

Council agrees to develop a vision for pharmacy in 2020

A profession-wide project is to be undertaken to develop a “socially responsible” vision of where pharmacy will be by the year 2020.

At the February Council meeting, the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society agreed to initiate the project — to be known as “Pharmacy 20:20” — as a follow-up to the Pharmacy in a New Age (PIANA) project.

PIANA was launched in 1995 to engage the profession in mapping and achieving its own aspirations. The new project will aim to achieve similar goals, the Society says.

The Council agreed that the project will be overseen by a steering group chaired by the President, Hemant Patel. Comprising both Council members and senior staff, the group will govern the strategic direction of the project and report to the Council at regular intervals.

The Council decided that Pharmacy 20:20 will be a cross-directorate project managed from within the Society’s Practice and Quality Improvement Directorate.

The Council also decided to form a project group responsible for the tactical and managerial decisions to ensure that the project delivers the strategic goals agreed by the steering group.

The project group will be chaired by the Society’s Director of Practice and Quality Improvement, David Pruce, and will have representation from each of the Society’s main operational directorates.

The project will have four phases in the first year: (1) project set-up; (2) preparing the profession for consultation; (3) first consultations; (4) second consultations.

The President said: “The aim of Pharmacy 20:20 will be to identify where pharmacy will be in 10 to 15 years’ time.

“PIANA took the views of the profession and distilled them into a vision that met the needs of patients and the aspirations of pharmacists. The Society has worked to realise that strategic vision and we are delighted that all our goals have now been achieved.

“With the major challenges in society and demand on modern professionals we need to create a vision for the next decade. What I see in 20 years is a confident and socially responsible profession.”